Web Design in Blackwater and Hawley | Web Designer in Blackwater and Hawley

Web Design in Blackwater and Hawley | Web Designer in Blackwater and Hawley

Choosing the right web design in Blackwater and Hawley or web designer in Blackwater and Hawley, is an important decision for the long-term success of your business.

If you choose the wrong web designer in Blackwater and Hawley, web design company in Blackwater and Hawley or web design agency in Blackwater and Hawley, you may be stuck with the results of your decision for some considerable time. If you make a bad decision then the opportunity cost to your business may be severe for years to come.

A Websites Primary Function

For most businesses, a websites primary function is to attract visitors and to convert those visitors into customers for your business.

It takes either time or money (or both) to attract traffic i.e. visitors to a website and the plain fact is that, with so many other distractions on the internet, the vast majority of visitors may never revisit your website again.

This means that you only ever get one shot at converting your website visitors into a prospect or customer for your business.

If the lifetime value of your customers is significant, the loss of just one customer may exceed the cost of setting up your website so take the time to make the correct decision for your business.

In essence you should regard your website is a direct response advertisement for your business – you want each and every visitor to be exposed to a call to action.

Research Competitors’ Web Design in Blackwater and Hawley

Study the websites and web designs of your direct competitors in Blackwater and Hawley and make a list of what you like about their websites and what you specifically dislike. How likely is it that a visitor to their website will become a customer of that business?

You can use this information to brief your web designer when you make the choice of which web designer to choose.

Ask yourself if your competitors site is getting any traffic (no traffic = no sales) – you can find this out either by putting their website URL in Alexa.com and seeing how they rank on Alexa or by doing some Google searches for their business e.g. if they are a plumber in Coventry put ‘plumber coventry’ into Google and see if they pop up on page one of Google.

Try this for a number of search terms and you will quickly see who your main online competitors are and you can use this information to brief your web designer i.e. my main online competitors are XYZ and your brief is to put my website ahead of theirs for these and other relevant keywords.

If the competitors website is getting a respectable amount of targeted traffic, once a visitor reaches your competitors website, is the website asking the visitor to take action and how compelling is the call to action? For example, are they specifically targeting their market and making an attractive offer to that market? Most websites are extremely weak about this aspect i.e. differentiating themselves and their products and services.

Choosing a Web Designer in Blackwater and Hawley | Web Design in Blackwater and Hawley

Firstly, why limit yourself to choosing a web designer in Blackwater and Hawley? With online communications like email, Skype and Google Hangouts, you can speak face-to-face with me wherever you are without leaving your desk.

You can watch your website as it is developed and give your feedback to shape the development of your site.

The main reason that you should not limit your choice of website designer to a local firm is that you should choose a web designer who has the following skills:

they understand internet marketing i.e. how to drive traffic. convert traffic into leads and sales, how to build sales funnels, how to monitor and test conversions, how to write sales copy etc

they have excellent design skills i.e. they can produce aesthetically pleasing designs and outstanding graphics – websites are essentially a visual medium and nowadays there is no excuse for poor design.

they know how to create content in a variety of media – text, audio and video in a variety of formats. Content drives visitor engagement and you want your content to be presented effectively.

someone who is trustworthy i.e. that understands that you want a return on your marketing budget rather than a redundant website i.e. that does nothing to grow your business.

someone who knows how to generate leads and make money online (- many of the web designers I know do most of their marketing offline with techniques like cold-calling and networking which means that they are not using internet marketing to grow their business! Ironic don’t you think?)

who will support you with their customer service.

Pricing of Web Design Services in Blackwater and Hawley

Earlier in this article, I explained why price should not be your principle consideration – who cares if you are charged £10,000 if your website generates £100,000 of new business?

Prices for creating websites can vary and there are typically 4 ways that web designers price their work:

an hourly charge i.e. if they charge out at £75 per hour and it takes 100 hours, the website would cost £7,500. The problem with this method is that there is no measure of quality of the end result and you do not know how productive the web designer will be.

a fixed fee based based on a detailed proposal – this is the normal method. It is important to agree the details of the project with care to avoid ‘scope’ creep and paying for extras not envisaged at the outset. (Recently a customer said they wanted a 5 page site which included an online shop – with the online shop the number of web pages actually extended the website to 17! )

by the page pricing (but be aware that there may be special pricing for things like special features, customised graphics, custom coding, e-commerce set-up, membership sites etc)

some web designers will ‘rent’ a website that they have already ranked and is getting traffic – the website is owned and operated by the web designer – they are simply renting the traffic and/or leads that emanate from the site. If you stop paying the rent then they will re-brand the site for another business who is willing to pay the rental.

Usually a fixed fee is the preferred method but take care to agree the full scope of the project in advance of starting the project because subsequent major alterations may cost you dearly.

Hiring Me, Mark Salmon

If you are thinking of hiring me, I would advise you to look around this website and also my website at http://mark-salmon.com to see what my skills are and to look at my work. Up until recently I have principally been building websites for my own digital products and a few friends without marketing my web design services.

If you like what you see, please contact me through the ‘Contact Us‘ page on this site with your contact details and an initial outline of your web design project. I will give you a short initial consultation to see if there is a mutual fit and to give you an outline price and completion date, subject to a more detailed proposal thereafter.

During our consultation, I will be focusing on how I can increase your revenue as a result of carrying out your web design project.

Whilst I am based in Stratford-upon-Avon, I have completed projects for clients in Thailand, the US, Ireland and many other countries as well as those scattered around the UK. So if I am not local to you, I am nevertheless ‘local’ by virtue of internet communication i.e. Google Hangouts etc. As I said before, choosing the right web design in Blackwater and Hawley or web designer in Blackwater and Hawley, is an important decision for the long-term success of your business – don’t limit your choice to local web designers because communication is not a problem.

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Mark Salmon is a self-employed internet marketing consultant and web designer. He has created many digital products delivered via membership sites and also enjoys helping businesses to create a profitable online presence. He has a wide range of internet marketing skills but is learning new stuff every single day which is intellectually stimulating!